Things you need to understand about refugees

A truth – over 50% of all refugees are children

For every man we are shown fleeing police in France and for every vagrant we see climbing aboard a truck in Calais on the news seemingly every day, there is a child who needs food and shelter. We have this image of men, willingly breaking international law and hoping across borders to, at least in our minds, sponge off a system designed for us!

The truth is that these people are escaping war, famine and terrible situations and traditions such as female circumcision – a brutal and all too popular practice in the third world – for their children’s futures. Who are we to deny them the opportunity to give those people, those fellow humans, the chance to make things a bit better for their next generation?

In 2014, 34,300 asylum claims were made by unaccompanied children: the highest number since records began. These are children of all ages, running away from their homes fearing for their lives.

A truth – we can afford to help

We complain that they are coming here to sign on or to take ‘our’ jobs. The fact that there is a culture of social welfare scamming by Irish ‘natives’ is lost on these complainants, as is the fact that those jobs are, in many cases, done for employers who pay little, if any, tax. Yet the Irish media doesn’t report on these facts. The vast majority of Irish people still accept the narrative that the national broadcaster spews in their direction and use little agency to filter through the agenda.

The fact is that only 14% of all refugees make it to the developed world and make a minuscule dent in our economies, especially here in Ireland, than compared to the tax dodging exercises of certain musicians with offshore bank accounts and the aforementioned conglomerates who abuse our corporation tax system.

Google paid 0.14% tax between 2005 and 2011. That works out at €10m per year. Had the company paid the usual income tax rate of either 12.5% or 25% (depending on circumstances), Google would have paid €537m or €1.1bn per year. The asylum system costs €150m per year. Surely this discrepancy cannot be ignored by even the least empathetic mind.

Even taking a moment to assess and compare the needs of the parties should draw empathy from even the most barbaric of humans. Tax dodgers or human beings in need of food and shelter. Those are the choices we are presented with and by repeating the narrative of the media we are standing by and are as responsible for their troubles as the wars that displace them.

If we can send aid to Israel, one of the world's wealthiest countries, we can do more to help those who actually need it.

A truth – we are responsible

The fact is that many of these refugees come from countries which are worn-torn because of our actions. More than half of the world’s refugees come from just three countries; Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia. I don’t think a history lesson is required to prove our part in those conflicts.

We cannot continue supporting invasions and war in these countries expecting there to be no consequences. The displacement of millions upon millions of people is a direct result of our international policies.

We are reaping what we have sewn.

Cause and effect.

A truth – they have to go somewhere

These displaced people, in the majority of circumstances, do not face the option of ever returning home. Indeed, in most cases, there is no home to go to. So what do they do? What have we Irish done for hundreds of years? Indeed, what have we humans done for as long as we have existed? We migrate. We move. We go to a place where we can prosper and thrive, not merely survive.

Lumping millions of displaced people in one place is not an option either. Our ‘great minds’ got together after the Second World War and decided to lump all the Jews in Palestine. Look at how that country is now; a war that never looks like ending and countless deaths and suffering. 

The most pertinent truth – we are all the same

When I say we are all the same, I don’t mean it in a malnourished, whinging, head in the clouds, lefty, socialist, Marxist, tree-hugging kind of way. I mean that we do it too. Every person we know that has traveled to Australia, Canada or the USA. The generations of us that have left our circumstances in the Emerald Isle and sought fortunes overseas. The thousands of us, myself included, that have wanted to better themselves. We are all the same.

The difference? Some collection of suited bureaucrats sat at an international meeting and decided which nations’ people should be allowed cross their borders. The difference between an immigrant, a refugee and tourist on a working holiday visa is mere politics.

When we endured famine in Ireland, did we sit around and suffer, waiting for things to get better? Some of us did and those were the ones who perished. The survivors, the ones who refused to give in fled Ireland and headed off around the world. This emigration and illegal crossing of international borders are the reason so many Irish people are alive today. Without this flagrant breaking of the law we are so quick to chastise, many of us would not be here today.

For any Irish person to criticise those risking their lives to save them is among the biggest hypocrisies I can imagine, we have literally been doing it by the boatload for thousands of years, we still do it and will continue to do so.

Sovereignty is a myth and is nothing more than a symptom of bureaucracy. These international borders we seek to protect all of a sudden are nothing more than a stick with which to beat the victims of our xenophobia.

Never before have the signs of NIMBYism been stronger and more damaging.

 Never accept the world with which you are presented.